The TetZoo Colouring Book, Spread 2 (Patreon)

Hi there. You will – I hope – be pleased to know that I’ve finished the second of the scenes from my planned colouring book. For this one, I wanted to depict two azhdarchids, reclining in a fern meadow, while smaller animals wander about – safe in the knowledge that the azhdarchids aren’t hunting and hence are not dangerous. Because I wanted to depict a great many ferns at different distances from the viewer, I realised that the easiest way to construct the scene was to do so in layers and then combine them. Below you can see the various separate elements I created, plus the various stages of the illustration. The animals were drawn separately and composited in as well. Below the drawings is the text I plan to use in the book. I hope you like it!

My plan is to have the sheets of the book published at pretty large size (perhaps A3) to give people as much colouring opportunity as possible.

A Late Cretaceous Romanian Scene

At the end of the Cretaceous – about 67 million years ago – what is today Romania is a large island termed Haţeg Island. It was inhabited by an interesting array of animals that weren’t found anywhere else. Here, we see animals discovered in the Sebeş Formation, some of which have been known since the 1870s, and others of which were discovered much more recently. The environment here was subtropical, moderately dry and mostly forested, its woodlands including birch, beech and walnut. Here, we’re looking across a large area devoid of trees – except in the background – and instead mostly covered by fern meadow. Various cycads, shrubs and reeds are present here and there as well. 

Haţeg Island was inhabited by a gigantic azhdarchid pterosaur which had an especially thick, powerful neck. It’s called Hatzegopteryx thambemai and appears to have been the island’s top predator, and perhaps evolved to fill this niche because large predatory dinosaurs were absent from this area. Even though this is a big, dangerous predator that would have grabbed and eaten various of the small dinosaurs, mammals and lizards that lived here as well, it wouldn’t have been hunting all the time. The two individuals shown here are taking time out and reclining for a nap in the warm sun. They lie with their bellies against the ground, their legs stretched out behind, and their wings held half-folded and out to the side.

A few Haţeg Island dinosaurs are foraging in the meadow and can ignore the azhdarchids for now. At right, we see the maniraptoran Balaur bondoc, and – at left – the small but spiky ankylosaur Struthiosaurus transylvanicus. Balaur has been identified as a dromaeosaur by some researchers, but by others as a member of the bird lineage Avialae. As should be obvious from the reconstruction you see here, this makes little difference to the way it would have looked when alive. Mammals and lizards lived on Haţeg Island as well and would have been findable under the ferns and among the leaf litter. In the foreground, we see the large lizard Barbetteius vremiri, a teiid-like animal that would have approached a metre in length.

Some Suggestions

You’ll need a lot of green to colour this scene, of as many shades as possible! Leaf litter is visible here and there, and there are some exposed rocks and areas of bare ground in the spaces between the masses of ferns. Hatzegopteryx was a predator of wooded places so might have been cryptically coloured in browns, greys and blacks but its head crest and massive bill – both of which are more obvious in the male here – could have had some splashes of colour and bold patterning. Be careful to notice where the wing membranes and other parts of the wing end and begin, since – in places – they’re hard to differentiate from the ground.

Balaur might have been cryptically coloured too. Perhaps its belly, the underside of its throat and its feet were much paler than the rest of it, and perhaps the long feathers on its forelimbs and at both the base and end of its tail were darker than the rest of the plumage. Struthiosaurus might have been boldly or brightly coloured – ankylosaur armour wasn’t necessarily dull as artists usually show – or it could have been camouflaged, you decide. Finally, Barbetteius could be coloured and patterned like any modern lizard from subtropical places.